All the Rage by A.L. Kennedy

A.L. Kennedy’s new book of short stories delves into the un-swept corners of self consciousness as the characters struggle to deal with other people or just try to exist as a human being. Her descriptive power utterly transforms the world so you see it anew as it is so imbued with the characters’ sensibilities. I found myself laughing out loud reading some stories as they are so filled with clever wit, bluntness or shamelessness. Other times I had to wrap into myself like a protective cocoon because the stories were touching upon a tender feeling I was too ashamed to admit was true. Here there are characters who wish to avoid having their personalities pinned down and remain anonymous. Others are so firmly entrenched in their own sense of self that they are totally blind to other points of view. All the stories include brazen forthright personalities that are memorable.

Many stories are split between a third person (but still subjective) narration and an italicised interior monologue. These points of view interact with each other to provide a striking representation of consciousness as it moves between the physical world and the imagination. It’s handled so seamlessly by the author that when I was engrossed in reading a story I stopped noticing the switch back and forth. This is a smooth and gifted method of story-telling which allows the reader to more effectively pry into a character’s mind.

When Kennedy enters the male consciousness she explores many recognizable masculine traits like undue aggression, an ironic sense of humour, over-inflated pride and an unwieldy impersonal sex drive. Not that she conforms to stereotype; these men are strikingly individual, but she exposes aspects of manliness with a bold surety. Take, for instance, the story ‘Because it’s a Wednesday” where an older man is enacting an affair with his cleaning woman. There are unsettling notions of entitlement and possession (and a hint of xenophobia) which comes with their sex although the act is totally consensual. While they share this strange sort of intimacy there is also a powerful sense of the gulf in understanding between them and that emotion has been replaced with this habitual animal act.

The nameless protagonist of ‘These Small Pieces’ wanders into a church near Christmastime to listen to a sermon and carols being sung. He seeks to hide his identity as he contemplates interactions with any people he should meet there by giving himself the name Doug. Amidst his musing on the decoration in the church he proposes a hilarious theory about the symbolism of the serpent in Christian iconography: “plainly the snake is, more properly, the bad maleness of man, the writhing soft-hard wickedness he carries ahead of him into his life, the heat he goes astray with. Mary stamps on it. Bad boy and she stamps it flat.” The narrator has a protective sense of children and feel that their vision of the world being corrupted by the indecorum of adults – as if he himself is still angry about the world being demystified by too much reality. There is a sombre sense that he’s striving to achieve a religious feeling but doesn’t have the correct sensibility to really embrace it.

A rift that’s occurred in a long-term relationship is succinctly described in the story ‘The Practice of Mercy’: “They had broken things, the pair of them. Unexpected damage had occurred, and they’d thought they would have managed better after their years of practice, but they hadn’t.” In a short scene and with tender simple dialogue Kennedy suggests that the way to continue on in relationships when trouble occurs is with patience and carefully-tempered forgiveness. The opposite conclusion is made in ‘A Thing Unheard of’ where the narrator tries to devise the best way to break up with a lover by mentally testing out various methods of breaking the bad news. Drawn down circular paths of logic and excuses and justifications the narrator decides in the end it’s best to do nothing, break contact and let the person in question hate them.

When Kennedy wants to be serious she is deadly so as in the story ‘Run Catch Run’ which I think is one of the deepest meditations on loneliness and solitude that I’ve ever read. Here a boy keeps company with a nameless dog while hiding down at the beach (although no one is looking for him.) Avoiding returning to his home because of his parents’ battling he finds solace in causing small acts of violence. The story ‘Knocked’ also focuses on a boy who is nearing the brink of self-discovery and transition into adulthood. He cultivates a growing awareness of what will be expected of him becoming a man and how robust he needs to be in order to confront the challenges that await.

In the title story ‘All the Rage’ while waiting at a station for a train that is continuously being delayed it’s observed that “Mark had decided he’d take the rest of the day in soft focus and so wasn’t wearing his glasses. This meant the shiny, tiny letters and fictional times simply flared together into uncommunicative blocks. He preferred them like that.” This serves as both a funny method for dealing with the ineptitude of the railways and a metaphor for how he lets his relationships become unfocused. Rather than striving towards a definitive future and making a solid commitment he decides “Sometimes people want nothing. It is a necessity.”

Progressing even further into gauging the boundaries between intimacy and anonymity in relationships the story ‘This Man’ is ruthless. It accurately depicts how feelings for a partner can flip so rapidly between being extremely close one moment and in the next not knowing them at all as if they were a total stranger. These varying levels of togetherness sift through the narrator’s consciousness in awkward moment to moment sensations where a squalid meal is grudgingly shared during a date.

Kennedy has a Beckett-like quality of describing the abstract conditions of existence through a stream of impressions and wayward thoughts voiced by dislocated characters. This method touches upon heightened states of consciousness and yields a lot of humour about the absurdity of life as well as highlighting individuals’ peculiarities. Some of the stories are immediately accessible with a familiar-sounding voice while others can be quite challenging. Once I got into each narrative I was utterly absorbed in the story and this unique point of view. “All the Rage” is filled with confident, first-rate writing.

Tales of the Suburbs by Justin David

The three stories contained in Justin David’s “Tales of the Suburbs” are a triptych portraying different stages of the coming out process for a character named Jamie. Each story shows in sensitive details the way Jamie matures, growing into himself as his gay sensibility becomes apparent to his family and friends. He must negotiate between acknowledging the community he’s been born into alongside being made to feel like an outsider. The author captures subtle shifts in familial relationships alongside evoking distinct feelings of time and place through original descriptions and crisply written dialogue. These are eccentric, funny and moving tales.

First story ‘Unicorn’ takes us into a family living room where adolescent boy Jamie spends time knitting with his grandmother. The story powerfully evokes the heyday of Boy George and the political temperature of the time period. An array of family pass through the room all distinctly created with precise dialogue that reveals their character. Still wide-eyed and innocent Jamie follows his passions entranced by the “tangerine twilight” which is a beautifully-phrased symbol of grace and ambiguity. His daydreams are filled with pop stars, particularly Boy George, and the glamorous rendezvous these celebrities might have in the city. Jamie is forthright in his interests and on the cusp of understanding that people will shame him for the unmanly things he loves. His uncle calls him “Nancy Boy” but because Jamie doesn’t have an awareness of his sexuality yet he doesn’t understand what this really means or why people create such sharp gender divides. The feisty women in the family aren’t afraid to deliver a chiding smack to the men who insult Jamie. He finds a natural camaraderie with these women whether it’s creating costumes or wondering over glossy photos of celebrities. Of course, as knowledgeable adults we readers understand Jamie’s burgeoning sexuality, but what the author does so cleverly is present Jamie’s perspective honestly as someone expressing his natural sensibility rather than self consciously trying to fit into his gender role. His grandfather begins rejecting him as he understands the boy’s flamboyance is symptomatic of what Jamie is growing up to be. This is the point where value judgements filter into a family’s consciousness overturning their personal affection for a boy they’ve raised and see him as part of a group that they scorn. No longer just Jamie but “Nancy.” This is a story of subtle power which has a tremendously moving effect.

In the story ‘Mirror Ball’ Jamie is now 16. It’s New Year’s Eve and he goes to the local annual community dance hall with his friend Paul and Paul’s family. Again the time period is indicated by the strong presence of music – in this case Whitney Houston whose rousing song ‘One Moment in Time’ is accompanied by a dance routine from Paul’s sister Debs. Jamie is more self aware. His burgeoning sexuality finds focus in his desire for his masculine friend Paul. But his friend spends the evening scouring the place for women to get off with leaving Jamie to dance with Paul’s mother Angie. When she drunken makes a pass at him and Jamie rejects her she dismisses him with the insult “bender.” Jamie has grown impatient with small town life and aches to escape. But this time he’s found an ally in the form of talented dancer Debs who wants to get away just as badly as he does. While dancing Jamie observes that “Tiny dots of mirror-light fly across nicotine stained wallpaper.” His recognition for all that shines in the midst of this mediocre dance hall gives promise for a life bigger and more fulfilling than what he can find returning year after year to this provincial setting. This is the portrait of a person who has realized he doesn’t belong in the place he’s been born and needs to venture out to discover his true “family.”

Jamie has reached a more mature independent state in the story 'Triffle.' This is the era of the Spice Girls. He returns home from Christmas where his parents show their acceptance of his relationship with a man by giving them a joint Christmas card. When Nan arrives with her characteristic green eye shadow the subject of Jamie's joint habitation with another man is a delicate one. Although the boy and his grandmother share a strong bond making an open acknowledgement of the boy's sexuality is a final hurdle that's difficult to leap over. However, on this occasion it's Jame's turn to be shocked by a hidden aspect of his parents' sexuality when he makes an accidental discovery by looking in their closet and also frank talk between his grandparents about their sexual life at the dinner table. The deep divide Jamie felt yawning between him and his family gradually closes as he finds himself bound to them in their eccentricities. The story illustrates the way we continue to discover surprising and multiple layers to our families as we mature.

Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille

The question of how to approach “Story of the Eye” is a difficult one. Should I read it with a fresh eye or informed eye? (ha ha) Before even opening this book which was lent to me by a friend I knew it had a reputation as being scandalously sexually explicit, but also having been a profound influence on many high-minded 20th century French thinkers and artists. Equally the cover of this Penguin books edition doesn’t hide the fact of what you’ll find inside by displaying a woman’s torso and her genitals. And yes, I was too embarrassed to read it on the tube. Nevertheless I felt nervous about approaching it uninformed for fear of not "getting it." Without looking at any background about the book or the essays by either Susan Sontag and Roland Barthes included in this edition, I plunged in reading. In general, I like to come to a book fresh without the influence of any reviews or essays to color my opinions before I’ve formed some of my own.

This novel doesn’t hold back opening almost immediately with a teenage boy describing meeting the sexually adventurous Simone who stands over a bowl of milk, hikes her skirt up and lowers herself down to give “pussy” a drink. Before running away, Simone’s stunned mother simply ignores her flagrant sexual exploits with the male narrator and turns a blind eye to the proceedings even when her daughter pisses on her from the rafters. In short intense episodes the unnamed male narrator goes on to describe an unrestrained romp-fest with Simone which include orgies, water sports, creative uses of boiled eggs, freeing a sectioned girl named Marcelle from a mental institution, bull fights and transgressive acts in a church including sexually assaulting a priest. Amidst these explicit carryings on the narrator makes a number of striking observations about dreams, desire, obsession, violence, breaking from convention and death.

So what to make of it all without the informed background or academic arguments to influence my opinion? Like reading a poem for the first time I’m not sure what to think of it. It certainly stirred a lot of feelings for me. Anger. Disgust. Lust. Despair. Boredom. It seemed more to be playing with my subconscious than presenting a coherent narrative I could follow and thoughtfully consider – although it is a story. I dread to think what nightmares might assault me tonight. Certainly this was the author’s intention. For when the libido is given free-reign these transgressive fantasies are the result and as he states “our sexual dream kept changing into a nightmare.” It would be naively idealistic to believe that sex should only ever manifest in romantic expressions of loving passion. Sex is also frightening, indulgent, melancholy and scandalous. It’s frequently expressed as an assertion of power or a willingness to cede our bodies to the powerful. From the heights of ecstasy we often fall into the trenches of despair. If you continuously and heedlessly chase after lust it will turn sour; it will lead to madness. Instinctively we know this. That’s why there is so much shame, so much fear and repression, so many social rules, so much concealing and many furtive liaisons. Without it would we have so much literature? Probably not.

By dealing with sex in such a forthright way does it make “Story of the Eye” great literature? Without even reading about the book’s background and academic arguments focusing on it I can already imagine the debate will be - is it pornography or is it art? A question that can’t be answered. People will use it for what they will. In my book group a few years ago we read Anais Nin’s collection of erotica “Delta of Venus.” This book provokes the same question. To me, Nin’s stories felt both less artful and less interesting than this book (although they are certainly just as frankly and dynamically sexual.) But I was also less offended. There are aspects of “Story of the Eye” which do make me feel very uncomfortable. Not for its explicitness even when it verges into the dodgy territory of necrophilia. But two aspects of the book strike me as deeply suspicious.

Firstly, this book is purely about the male gaze. The narrator is anonymous and Simone is a male fantasy. Without inhibition or questioning she joins him in realizing his most perverse and insidious desires. When they free Marcelle from the nut house she suddenly becomes terrified of the narrator who takes on the symbolic image of a cardinal to her. The narrator realizes she makes this connection from the red blood which covered him when during their orgy he violently raped a girl. This incident wasn’t recorded when the orgy scene was previously recounted. Rape in fantasy certainly is something that should be explored – as it is an impulse which enters into the imagination of some people either as being the perpetrator or the victim. My issue with the way it’s raised here is the callous reference to it as if it were totally expected and not worth mentioning before.

The second thing I found offensive in the book is in a passage where he describes Simone having a different type of climax and makes a racist analogy: “These orgasms were as different from normal climaxes as, say, the mirth of savage Africans from that of Occidentals. In fact, though the savages may sometimes laugh as moderately as whites, they also have longlasting spasms, with all parts of the body in violent release, and they go whirling willy-nilly, flailing their arms about wildly, shaking their bellies, necks, and chests, and chortling and gulping horribly.” This blanket description referring to the way Africans have sex is both a stereotype and diminishing by turning a certain group of people into a symbol for unrestrained sexual expression. What’s particularly inflammatory about the statement is the end description of “horribly” which gives negative connotations to an unconscious physical reaction. Although Bataille seems to be invoking these multifarious sexual escapades as a way of seriously exploring the psychological complexity of lust here he vilifies a race of people by profiling them as showing savage unrestraint and presents it as if he’s making a humorous joke at their expense.

Having pointed those out there are aspects of the book I did find symbolically powerful and resonant. In particular, he has a way of describing the inability to achieve real satisfaction or fully satiate desire even after a climax is achieved – even multiple times. Here he notes the power of dreaming when thinking about the open window in the mental institution belonging to Marcelle as he looks up at it: “It is not astonishing that the bleakest and most leprous aspects of a dream are merely an urging in that direction, an obstinate waiting for total joy, like the vision of that glowing hole, the empty window” Here he suggests that desire is the murky condition which can’t be climbed out of no matter how many times a seeming fulfillment or an actual orgasm is achieved. The fantasy will always remain just out of reach, hanging luminous and attractive in the distance.

Going further, Bataille contemplates that desire for intercourse and the impulse to sexually meld into each other exists on an elemental level. He surmises “death was the sole outcome of my erection, and if Simone and I were killed, then the universe of our unbearable personal vision was certain to be replaced by the pure stars, fully unrelated to any external gazes and realizing in a cold state, without human delays or detours, something that strikes me as the goal of my sexual licentiousness: a geometric incandescence (among other things, the coinciding point of life and death, being and nothingness), perfectly fulgurating.” Here he elegantly suggests that light is a sort of an ideal expression of desire’s fulfillment. The radiance of it is caused by a collision of feeling beyond the flesh. It’s both an idealistic concept and an existentially crushing thought.

From the numerous explicit descriptions there is a building sense that (like in the John Waters’ film ‘A Dirty Shame’) “anything goes” is the new normality. This obviously clashes vociferously against what’s considered the civilized manner of achieving conjugation. Bataille writes “To others, the universe seems decent because decent people have gelded eyes. That is why they fear lewdness. They are never frightened by the crowing of a rooster or when strolling under a starry heaven. In general, people savour the 'pleasures of the flesh' only on condition that they be insipid.” His attack on “decent people” is linked to a sense of inhibitions about sex in society. The transgression he describes in this book is a way of bulldozing through this to reclaim the untamed animalistic instinct to have sex and assert that we are “akin to one another in the common isolation of lewdness, weariness, and absurdity.”

All this unrelenting lewdness is comical but also necessary. How else to navigate through the moral and socially polite barricades to deal frankly with how sex expresses itself in our imaginations? The book is elevated by the fact the writer probes the matter so assiduously like a nightmare he refuses to be thrown out of. Bataille’s writing is uneven, sometimes repetitive and doesn’t fully consider many facets of the complex psychosexual being. But perhaps if the book weren’t so short it would lose its impact? Or perhaps it would become such an intimidating swamp of bodily fluid no one could finish it? As it stands, it’s provoked a lot for me to think about and, having restrained myself, I’m now eager to read the included essays by Sontag and Barthes as well as others’ opinions and more information about Bataille himself.

If you’ve read this book I’d be very interested to hear what you think and if you haven’t does frank sexual content put you off from reading books even if they are considered a so-called "classic"?

All the Birds, Singing by Evie Wyld

I read Evie Wyld’s first brutal and poetic novel “After the Fire, A Still Small Voice” with my book club some time ago. She has such a distinct powerful voice that I was thrilled to see she published a second novel last summer. I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to get to it, but I’m so glad I finally did. Since I started the novel on Saturday morning I’ve had a hard time putting it down. “All the Birds, Singing” is tremendous. Opening with the death of a sheep and a strange reclusive woman named Jake on her farm located on an English island, the book layers on several mysteries which become more and more intriguing as the novel progresses.

The book is split into two parts. On one side we read about Jake’s experience on her sheep farm trying to discover who or what is killing her sheep, the indifferent hostility of her local police and her friendship with a mysterious man named Lloyd who appears on her property. In alternate chapters that move back in time we read about Jake’s past in Australia, why she ends up sexually entangled with a grimy old farmer named Don and the reason she fled her home. This shifting back and forth between locations and periods of time soon feels quite natural and adds a rapidly accelerating force to the narrative as Jake’s past is gradually revealed.

Wyld describes the moment to moment thought process of her narrator with deft assurance making the story feel both engaging and thoroughly real. Jake is a physically and mentally strong woman who keeps her distance from other people, but finds she can't completely remove herself from society or the dangers of the world. Equally the author captures the social awkwardness in her interactions with the other characters so that small gestures indicate a lot about what is being left unsaid.

The author has a way of describing Jake’s smile so that you can tell she’s grinning as a front to hide her true thoughts/feelings because she believes this is what people want. It’s something she’s learned in order to survive and navigate tricky situations where she might be vulnerable. In actuality, her smile probably registers as a false grimace which is only there to conceal and pretend. Although the book is told from Jake's point of view the reader is often aware of both her internal thoughts and the external opinions of those around her.

Animals play an important role in the narrative. The book is a thorough lesson in sheep shearing. But also, the countryside is awash with wild animals lurking around every corner from English foxes to explosive nests of spiders to more exotic Australian animals like goanna, pademelon and galah. The environment is so rich in animal life that it begins to feel that the world is sinister and wild with everyone taking on a role as either the hunter or hunted. They become an intrinsic part of Jake’s psychology as demonstrated here: “A fox was being made love to somewhere in the woods and her shrieks cut straight into my room.” What's particularly striking about this quote is the way Wyld introduces the romantic notion of “made love” and immediately after adds a sinister edge with “her shrieks.” Some animals stand out as distinct characters in themselves. A dog named Kelly is described with such precision and engaging with Jake in such a dynamic way that she becomes an important character herself.

“All the Birds, Singing” is a beautifully written book about harsh difficult subjects. Small details which seem insignificant early on in the narrative take on a deeper emotional meaning as the story progresses and we learn more about Jake’s past. This is skilful, inventive storytelling. Jake is a surprising vibrant female character unlike any other I've read in fiction. The ending is a real shocker, deeply moving and gives enough room for ambiguous interpretations. It's left me wondering.

Listen to an interview with Wyld about the novel on Radio 4 here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0367c3d

The Circle by Dave Eggers

The subject matter of “The Circle” proved itself relevant to me when I became very self conscious while reading how often I paused to check my phone when it buzzed from a new email or stopped to check Twitter. For those who embrace it, the digital age is constantly splitting our attention between what’s in front of us and what’s happening online. Experience takes on an inauthentic feel if it’s not captured, shared and commented upon in some way. We thrive on the validation we get from the amount of followers we have, comments received or likes given. This has produced a dramatic shift in how we relate to other people, measure self esteem, process the world and define what is considered private. Dave Eggers imagines a not too distant future where an ambitious woman named Mae joins a rapidly growing search and social media tech company called The Circle that is in the process of transforming society by eradicating privacy altogether.

As a wide-eyed young professional who has been stuck at a very non-tech-savvy company Mae is thrilled by the advanced organization at her new job. Not only do they have all the latest gadgets and live on a utopian-like campus of wonders, but the social structure of the company is meant to support and reinforce employees’ productivity through engaging them as a community. Soon Mae realizes that the optional after-hours social activities aren’t so optional when given a firm talking to by terrifying representatives from the HR department. Employees are ranked by the amount they participate at events not physically but through photographing, posting, commenting and giving emoticon reactions to them on their social media site. As Mae feels pressure to keep up and learn the way to advance her ranking she rapidly becomes wholly involved in the company and turns into a voice box and lynchpin that could see The Circle become a mandatory way of life for everyone everywhere.

A lot of the concepts and technological developments imagined in this novel do feel very real, but the rapid adoption of them by large governmental organizations and the population in general didn’t. The narrative perspective is very much an inside view of this world so Mae’s flurry of supportive comments from around the world is, of course, largely positive. However, I found it difficult to believe that people would generally be so in favour of surrendering their privacy. It’s true that large swaths of people readily post what would usually be considered intimate details and photos about their lives on the internet where anyone could access them. But this information is usually strategically uploaded and shared as part of constructing a particular projection of a person’s identity. I find it hard to believe that so many would enthusiastically give all-out access to every moment of their lives without kicking up a fuss.

I appreciated it more when the novel points out how acolytes of The Circle showed an overinflated sense of users influence on government policy such as the statement “We’ve sent over 180 million frowns from the U.S. alone, and you can bet that has an effect on the regime.” Believers in the project revere their ranking and statistics so much that they think these numbers equate to real-world changes – as if passively clicking a button to make a frown face will convince a dictatorial government to reverse their policies. Also it felt very true when Eggers' describes the endless demand for more attention and prickly egos that come out with interacting with virtual strangers online. When Mae comments on someone's status there are effuse thanks followed by demands for more attention or requests for favours in relation to other friends. The web is like a black hole down which you can pour endless amounts of attention and it will never be enough.

However, there is something about the simplicity of the central protagonist Mae which felt troubling to me. Eggers must make her naïve so that she is particularly susceptible to believing the company's good intentioned visions of eradicating crime and child kidnapping even when it means installing cameras everywhere on the planet and planting microchips in children's skulls. However, it's slightly unsettling to me that her choices between championing The Circle's dubious technology or rebelling against the totalitarian possibilities inherent in its appropriation are distilled by the author into her two romantic pursuits in the book. One man stands for the company's values and the other stands for opposition to it. Who will she choose? This seems to me a very old fashioned way of solving a female protagonist's moral dilemma.

“The Circle” is an entertaining and easy read, but I didn't feel like it lived up to it's potential. I've never read this author before but I expected slightly more literary finesse from someone who has been so influential and popular in the book world. Eggers presents a dystopian modern version of a Brave New World that makes privacy a crime. The questions it asks are important ones we should continue asking ourselves while technology advances and is adopted by the general population so rapidly. It's an exaggerated vision of how reality could go, but I feel it doesn't fully engage with the complexity of the ideas it raises.

Carthage by Joyce Carol Oates

Reading a long epic novel by Oates is a wholly immersive experience. I became fully lost in this book, grew to love the uniquely individual characters and spent a lot of time contemplating the intellectual and emotional conundrums that the author presents. It’s a dramatic, extraordinary story that explores large subjects like the Iraq war, the American penitentiary system, alcoholism and spousal abuse. Yet, the main thrust of the tale is a deeply personal story of a family that’s been splintered apart and slowly draws itself back together to form anew. In the fictional town of Carthage, a small community in upstate New York, a young college-aged woman named Cressida goes missing. Her respected ex-mayor father Zeno desperately tries to find her. A war-veteran named Brett who is the fiancé of Cressida’s sister is suspected of being involved. Like the drawings of M.C. Escher (whose art Cressida has an intense passion for) the laws of logic/gravity are suspended as the family desperately tries to find out what happened to their youngest daughter and are forced to go around in endless circles while the search is conducted. Time becomes distorted for them “time passed with dazzling swiftness even as, perversely, time passed with excruciating slowness.” This description so perfectly encapsulates the feeling of life in a time of crisis. The truth of Cressida’s fate is surprising and heartbreaking. Over the course of the artfully composed narrative we learn what happens to her and the other compelling characters involved.

The novel takes time with each of the characters allowing us to understand them along their own personal journeys. But Cressida is always at the centre of the novel and she’s someone I grew to love although she initially comes across as an abrasive and difficult individual. As a precocious and passionate person she doesn’t easily reveal herself. With a teenager’s typical cynical attitude it was “easier for Cressida to mock than to admire. Easier for Cressida to detach herself from others, than to attempt to attach herself.” However, when she does show passion for a cause or individual she puts herself wholly into them. When she’s rebuffed or misunderstood she retreats and becomes very bitter and more carefully guarded as a result. She attempts to create her “self” anew. But the veneer of a new identity can only last for so long. “She’d cobbled together a self, out of fragments, she’d glued and pasted and tacked and taped, and this self had managed to prevail for quite a long time. But now… she was falling apart.” The attempt to adapt and create oneself is a necessary method of survival; as the world changes we must change with it. But eventually the past impinges upon the present and you can no longer deny who you really are. When Cressida fully realizes this she must take drastic action.

Apart from the focal point of Cressida, we encounter a fascinating array of characters driven by their own individual logic. Her mother Arlette whose husband dismisses her worries saying that she tends to “catastrophize” things finds great personal faith and strength in the face of tragedy where many others would crumble. Touchingly she must find places to cry in secret away from camera and members of the community during the search for her daughter. Her husband Zeno follows a diametrically opposite downward trajectory. Where once this intelligent well-meaning man was strong he becomes inconsolable, resorts to drinking and longs for the return of what was once a loving stable family unit.  As Oates writes: “It is a terrible thing how swiftly a man’s strength can drain from him, like his pride” The shock of losing his daughter so swiftly and not being able to rectify the situation renders him powerless and causes him to lose all his confidence.

Aside from the family one of the most intriguing and virtuous characters in the book is the mysterious figure of the “Investigator.” This is a journalist who has written a series of books which expose corruption and the American institutional exploitation of the lower classes. Like a literary version of the scrupulous documentary filmmaker Fred Wiseman the “Investigator” bears witness to systematic corruption and complex systems which cause the downtrodden to remain underfoot. However, Oates sensitively portrays that devotion to a larger cause means great personal sacrifice is needed leading him to be emotionally closed to others. Another fascinating character is a strong-willed lesbian named Haley McSwain. Essentially she is a person led by good morals, but who has been embittered by experience with the world which leads her to take questionable actions. The pain she carries from her past hurt is so palpably real she arrives in the course of the narrative as a fully-realized human being who makes a powerful impact.

Oates uses multiple perspectives and narrative techniques to fully map the dramatic events she lays out. The reader inhabits the perspective of naïve young soldier Brett who has been sent to fight in Iraq. “Following orders you forget what was the day before… Sand inhaled in lungs so each breath you took, you drew the desert deeper into you.” The confusion and sense of dislocation carries through following his return to the United States. Memories flash through and mingle with the present showing how neurological damage caused in battle has impacted his consciousness. We also hear the breathless voice of his fiancé Juliet who tries desperately to assist Brett in his rehabilitation and assimilation back into American life. There are impersonal journalistic accounts of crime conducted during wartime paired with crime in an average American community during peacetime. Sometimes text is blacked out like documents that have been censored. Other times general opinions are delivered by a single individual such as when Brett’s friend gives a conversational account of Brett’s character where the text is marked as italicized. The narrative voice switches between these different levels of interiority and objectivity to give a rounded picture of events. Through this skilful technique Oates allows us to understand the characters’ thoughts, the general perspective of the community around them and the characters’ reactions to those popular attitudes.

'Ascending and Descending' by M.C. Escher

Amidst this engrossing story Oates presents a number of philosophical dilemmas. For example, we are prompted to question the meaning of home. The question presented “Why is it, when you dream about a place meant to be ‘home’ –or any ‘familiar’ place –it never looks like anything you’d ever seen before?” Notions of “home” are inextricably linked with nostalgia and idealism so the physical reality of the place in which we were raised and nurtured resides in an emotionally-coloured compartment of the mind. The interplay between the tangible “home” and the imagined “home” feed into how we construct our sense of “self” – another concept which is scrupulously questioned and explored throughout the story as I already discussed concerning Cressida’s character. Alongside these issues which centre around the essential meaning of “personality” are issues of broader social inquiry such as ‘what is good?’ and ‘what is ethical?’ Approaches to answering these questions are drawn on both religious and atheist viewpoints as filtered through the characters’ perspectives. These profound questions are skilfully intertwined with the story being told so that you often don’t realize you’re pondering them till later when thinking about the mental journey you’ve just taken.

The heft of the subjects involved in this novel are tempered at times with humour – most of which involves intellectually playful commentary on the human condition. For instance, Cressida with her sly sensibility at one point paraphrases a remark by W.H. Auden: “We’re here on earth to help other people. But what the other people are here for, nobody knows.” At another time when Zeno is confronted by his daughter who asks why he didn’t carry on producing offspring in order to also have a son he wryly explains “I’ve been spared little Oedipus eyeing me out of the shadows.” Sometimes the joke is more subtle such as when Oates comments on the implausible expectations of reciprocal affection: “Always you believe that those whom you adore will adore you. Not in any species other than Homo sapiens is this possible- this delusion!” The wit shown with remarks like this demonstrates how it’s important to maintain a sense of life’s inherent absurdity even while mired in the multifarious difficulties it presents.

Carthage manages to both highlight contemporary issues at the centre of American life today and also create a distinctly localized tale of loss, heartache and redemption. A tour through a prison is described in such realistic and striking detail I felt as if I had actually walked through the prison myself. It’s with such vividly descriptive power that I feel transformed by the novel I’m reading so that I’m more aware of the world and have a more dynamic way of processing it. This is the kind of book that reminds me how potent storytelling can be. It’s an impressive accomplishment. 

Books About Infidelity

I know. How romantic, right? I actually really love Valentine’s Day and consider myself an amorous person, but rather than post about the best couples in novels or most romantic books I wanted to pose a counterpoint to all the sugary sweetness. Relationships are complicated and nowhere is this more comprehensively explored than in novels. Here are three of my favourite books which deal with infidelity in a way that is intelligent and gives fully rounded points of view to all parties involved.

The Forgotten Waltz – Anne Enright

Without a doubt this is one of my favourite novels that I’ve read in the past few years. Enright has a sharp dry sense of humour and brilliantly gets at the raucous emotions surrounding infidelity. This novel is written from the perspective of the “other woman” as she comes to terms with the dynamics of her affair and the wedge she’s made between a father and his daughter. Her memories of passion come butting against the stark reality of her present. This novel is poetic, heart-wrenching and left me in tears.

The Age of Innocence – Edith Wharton

Manners and decorum hide simmering passion. Nobody got this better than Wharton. Her prose delicately handle the growing emotion between a married man and the mysteriously oddball Countess. The reader can feel a strong sympathy for all the parties involved no matter how much you may want to cheer for Newland to leave his conventional wife for the woman he’s really drawn to. The novel itself has been somewhat eclipsed by the excellent Scorsese film but it’s well worth reading if you haven’t already.

The Painted Veil – W. Somerset Maugham

Maugham really knows how to put his adulteress through the wringer. Kitty marries too soon and realizes once she’s dragged away from her homeland to the far East by her new husband Walter that she’s made a terrible mistake. Her affair with a handsome and charming official can’t end well and it doesn’t. Rather than leave his wife, Walter gives her an ultimatum which could end in her death. This novel is both terrifying and brutal on its characters psyches showing how hard it is to discover what you really want in romance.

Do you have any favourite novels which deal with infidelity?

Inside a Pearl by Edmund White

Inside a Pearl is a memoir detailing the author’s years living in Paris from 1983 to 1998. No one is able to capture the spirit of a society at a particular time with as much vibrancy and wit as Edmund White. His inexhaustible energy for meeting new people and participating in high culture give him the ideal material for reconstructing this era of civilization in such a detailed, intelligent, moving and very funny book. It’s a subjective and lively account which compares the typical characteristics of French vs. American nationalities and goes behind the curtain of some of the most important artistic movements of the time. He primarily does this by sifting through the ideas and opinions of the many charismatic and fascinating people he meets during his travels and time living in France. Of course, none of this would make such a powerful impactful if it weren’t for the skilled craftsmanship with which White composes his prose. His fast-paced recollections come across as so personal and rambunctious that I think it’s easy to sometimes miss what perceptive observations he makes and how beautifully intricate his linguistic choices are unless you slow down to read his sentences carefully. This is definitely a book to be savored.

Like a knowledgeable social scientist who has been given the freedom to express how he really feels White delineates the values, manners and attitudes of the French. He shows where cross-cultural misunderstandings occur when the French encounter not only Americans, but the British and other Europeans as well. These are usually based in how people from different countries imagine what France will be like as White wryly comments: "Every country has a fantasy about every other." The observations about French attitudes can be both terrifically funny and sardonic. He states at one point that “when it comes to dying no one is better equipped or less whiny than the French. It's a role they've been rehearsing their whole lives. I'm sorry if that sounds cynical; it's meant to be admiring.” With suave grace he quickly qualifies any statements that may sound too brutal with assurances that his opinions come from a stance of true admiration. Of course, America and England get the clothes whipped off them as well under White's biting scrutiny. From a bookish standpoint, some of the most fascinating comparisons White makes include how literature is both produced and received in different cultures.

The years White documents in this book are when the AIDS crisis was really coming into full-bloom with many people finding themselves diagnosed as positive or dying. Here White documents how his own diagnosis is chillingly delivered by a European doctor after an agonizingly long wait for the results to be sent from America. White skillfully conveys the acute fright and confusion of living through a time when the disease was so misunderstood and the conflicting information unsettled everyone. Although White has fictionalized his intense relationship with his lover Hubert who died of AIDS in his novel The Married Man, here he gives a personal heartbreaking account of the tempestuous relationship and its sad end. White expresses his humility and calm sense of reason when he states that it’s only through a genetic accident that the disease has a slow effect upon him thus allowing him to live when many other people he knew died.

This book memorializes many people who would otherwise be forgotten or misunderstood by history. A personal light is shone upon the many famous people White encounters as a journalist and through social engagements. The sheer volume of names and references spun out may be dizzying, but they reconstruct the whole era of Parisian life in that time like a sociologist’s vibrantly-colored patchwork quilt. White also details the lives of some of the little-known great social ringleaders of the era who are responsible for bringing together and influencing artists. White’s most personal relationships are treated with tender care showing why his inner circle is so special and the ways in which true friendship is demonstrated. In addition there are numerous accounts of idiosyncratic wayward “tricks” White picks up and sensitive engagements with cabmen. This compendium of entertainingly-wrought detailed portraits all build up to demonstrate White’s tremendous generosity of spirit, insatiable curiosity and true love of people with all their ingenious quirks.

The most detailed and tender account of someone White gives in this book is of his late friend Marie-Claude or “MC” who helped introduce him to French life and gave frequent dinner parties which allowed him access to a wide spectrum of people. This tender account of their friendship shows the tremendous special bond that can be forged between a straight woman and a gay man. White also frequently makes mordant observations about the differences between genders and people of different sexual orientations. For instance, at one point he states “No matter how wifely his fantasies, every man is brought up to be the first violin.” White gives insight into the multiple layers and shifting dynamics which construct each person’s gender identity as it slides between the scales of submission and dominance.

I found it very touching near the end when after reading so many accounts of White’s interactions with innumerable friends and taking a wide variety of lovers that he could feel so tremendously alone whether taking a walk on the streets of London or living in Paris after his lover Hubert’s death. It seems to be a condition especially particular to artists to always feel existentially alone even when their work is well received. Luckily White meets a lover near the end of his time in France who he continues to be with to this day. Rather than settling down and retiring to his homeland, this move merely signals another stage in this gregarious and brilliant writer’s life.

Click here to read Tim Teeman’s excellent interview with White about this book:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/02/11/edmund-white-sex-success-and-survival.html

Inside a Pearl Inside a Bubble Bath – thoughts on supposedly relaxing places to read

I woke up around 4:30 this morning and couldn’t get back to sleep. I thought a relaxing bubble bath and read might lull me back to sleepytown. There is an idealized image of someone sinking into a deep tub full of warm sudsy water with a good book and losing themselves in the story. But here’s my problem with reading in the bath: it’s wet. Having to shift around occasionally I inevitably end up getting a hand wet and then how am I going to turn the page without also getting the book wet? The water slowly drains out. The bubbles burst. The steam rises up. And no matter how hard I try I seem to always damage the book. Maybe I need to get less anxious about keeping my books pristine letting the type blur and the spine warp. But also the struggle to get really comfortable inevitably clouds my concentration on whatever I’m reading even if it’s a riveting book like Edmund White’s new memoir “Inside A Pearl.” The same thing goes for reading on the beach. I can’t think of anything less relaxing. The hot sun makes me sweat. The sand gets in the crevices of my book and body. Handsome near-naked men walk by distracting me. Children are all around with their wicked cackling. I’d prefer a dark rainy evening, a cup of tea and my comfortable study sofa any day. Maybe that’s why I’m so suited to London.

 How do you feel? Does anyone actually read in the bathtub or on the beach?

In the Wolf’s Mouth by Adam Foulds

I was first captivated by Adam Foulds’ deeply thoughtful and poetic writing when I read his novel “The Quickening Maze” about the poet John Clare. He has a way of capturing the complex emotion of a scene using only a few choice phrases. With this new novel “In the Wolf’s Mouth” he expands upon this talent by producing short evocative chapters that dramatise scenes from WWII. The two primary characters the novel follows are an English officer named Will and an American infantryman named Ray. In the first half of the book we follow the fighting in North Africa. In one instance the battle scenes are actually described in poetry; this reinforces the breathless chaos and intensity of the fighting. Outside of portraying Will and Ray’s internal impressions and perspective with lyrical authority, Foulds employs powerfully direct and meaningful dialogue that brings to life a range of other characters in the novel. The second half of the novel follows the troops as they move to Sicily where they drive out the Fascists and attempt to restore order and stability. Bookending their tales is the story of two Sicilian men who become wrapped up in a mafia battle. Foulds writing shows how the effects of war reverberate throughout time and produce complexly unintended consequences.

Sometimes I get frustrated when reading novels set in a particular historical time period where the author doesn’t give many indicators of the actual events which are being depicted. Without the right amount of knowledge to flesh out the historic significance of what’s happening I’m sometimes left bewildered and that I’m missing out. However, I don’t think it’s necessarily the novelist’s job to give a clear map coloured in by his research. What Foulds does so skilfully is make you feel the events. Even if I felt lost sometimes while trailing through the rampaging storm of battle I always felt thoroughly entrenched in the character’s subjective experience. After all, many of the men fighting or the people whose lands were being trampled through had little sense of what was really going on either.

With vivid intensity he describes the frantic madness of combat: “blasts felt in the soles of the men’s feet, the spasming light in darkness... Ray felt small, and human.” With massive destruction occurring all around Foulds manages to continuously bring back the attention to the vulnerable individual navigating his way throughout what feels like sheer chaos.

Apart from Foulds’ vivid depictions of the battlefield he also accounts for the horrors which occur on the periphery of war. Institutions that have overthrown the fascist occupiers and are meant to be protecting the native population instead sometimes use and oppress them. Specific races of people are rounded up and put into pits to slowly die. Women are made to prostitute themselves for cans of food.  Horrifyingly we follow Will throughout the war as his moral convictions soften and he decides “It was usual for soldiers in a war or for gentlemen at various times and places to avail themselves of the comfort of women. This was the getting of experience. This was being a man.” Individual reason is trodden under the masculine mentality of conquest and triumph. Oppressive behaviour is reinforced by notions of a wartime mentality that excuses behaviour that would be considered abhorrent in peacetime.

A Sicilian offering soldiers wine during WWII.

Foulds also conveys a sobering sense of the lasting psychological effects wartime has upon people’s mentality. “Ray stood next to his friend enclosed in this sadness, knowing he would never be outside it again. This had happened to them all. This was for ever.” Not only does the horror of battle break individuals down physically and psychologically but it has a debilitating effect upon the spirit of those who survive it.

Rest assured that the novel isn’t all blood and gloom. Foulds injects a fair amount of humour into his writing – much of which rises out of culture clashes which result from the mingling of multi-national armed forces and interactions with Sicilians. Also if I ever travel to Palermo I don’t think I’ll be able to not think of this spectacularly evocative description of the place: “Palermo had an air of Miss Havisham’s madness about it, grandly baroque and broken up with sudden sky and heaps of rubble.”

Near the end of the novel there is a climatic scene which brings the profound issues raised throughout the book to a head. The fast-paced intensity of “In the Wolf’s Mouth” is supported by Foulds’ beautiful prose and sophisticated ability to shed light upon society’s worst behaviour. At one point he writes “Artillery showed this to be true of the whole world. Life was a skin: it could be peeled away like strips of wallpaper with its coherent pattern.” One could say that words have the same detonating power upon consciousness – especially when used by someone with Foulds’ lyrical adroitness.

Here is a short interview with Foulds about this novel: http://www.vintage-books.co.uk/blog/adamfouldsinterview/

Women I've Known by Greg Johnson

I’ve been a fan of Greg Johnson’s fiction for a long time. His novels ‘Pagan Babies’ and ‘Sticky Kisses’ are both excellent and the several short story collections he’s published show an impressive variety of styles and voices. Back in 2005 I was asked to guest-edit an issue of the online literary journal Blithe House Quarterly and I quickly asked Johnson to submit a story. It was a wonderful project as I was able to include Johnson as well as many other authors I respect and admire like Ali Smith, Jackie Kay and Michael Carroll (whose first book of short stories is being published this summer by the University of Wisconsin Press.) It was thrilling to receive Johnson’s story “Women I’ve Known” about a revealing fictional letter exchange with the author Willa Cather. This title has also been used as the title of this collection of old and new stories. The name is appropriate as the stories feature a range of fascinating female characters who we come to know intimately by the end of each story. Many of the stories are centered around Atlanta and contain a distinctly Southern flavor. Usually with short story collections I find myself unable to connect with some stories and only find a few really memorable. However, this book includes only stellar examples of the short story form; each tale is a mesmerizing read and makes a lasting emotional impact.

Some of the stories are from a male perspective, but concentrate heavily on the lives of enigmatic and interesting women the men encounter. “Crazy Ladies” is a haunting story about a boy's encounter with a woman branded in the local community as crazy because she lives shut in with her adult son and occasionally escapes the house to wander the town singing and removing her clothes. When she finds her way into the boy's grandmother's house the old woman states how her son abuses her and removes her clothes to show her bruised body. The son comes to take his mother away and though the police are contacted no action is taken against the son. The story makes us question the term 'crazy' and if such terminology is just a neat way to dismiss things which are too ugly or difficult to face. In 'Fever' a boy spends his days at home with rheumatic fever being cared for by his young mother who is a housewife and married to a man who is much older than her. They watch melodramatic movies and the boy wonders if his mother is having a love affair like the heroines in the dramas. The pair feel that they “could do nothing with the terrible fever of the roused love inside us, which was objectless, ravenous, and self-consuming, and which left only an astonished silence in its wake.” They are trapped together in the house with all these emotions churning inside them, but are unable to direct them out anywhere with only fantasies used as outlets for all their feelings. Many stories in this collection thus prompt the reader to ask profound questions such as what happens when we feel love, but have no object for that love?

In 'Escalators' an aunt and her nephew are left only with each other after tragedies took the lives of the rest of their close family. The nephew Gary tries to help his glamorous aunt Dinah overcome her many fears – starting with her fear of escalators. In a series of sections the truth about the death of Dinah's son Avery is revealed in a way that is dramatic and heartbreaking. The story 'I Am Dangerous' is bloody with the raw heartache of emotion. But like many of these stories much of the violence and tumultuous emotions are held inside rather than expressed externally. There is a tension between the fantasy of how the narrator wants to portray himself and the way he acts. A virtually wordless companionship with a woman in an otherwise empty movie theatre becomes the most intimate and intense encounter of his life although it is completely anonymous. There is a tragic sense of being locked in one's own consciousness when he's thinking about his relationship to others and observing “I'll never know their private histories and they'll never know mine, and what other kind of history is there?” We are all trapped in our subjective experience of the world and that personal history isn't capable of being conveyed in any true sense. However, the story seems to suggest that this aura of mystery and not being able to truly know the motives of others is the very fuel which fires love.

Other stories in the collection are from a female perspective. “Leavings” follows Claire, a woman who returns to her estranged aunt Lillian's house to help her move. It examines different kinds of loneliness through three characters. Claire is on the brink of breaking up from her husband. Strong-willed Lillian's belongings are stolen. And Lillian's son Mack commits suicide after disengaging with the world. The story produces a strong sense of melancholy as each character feels very alone with their personal struggle despite being a family. The satirical story 'Scene of the Crime' portrays a wealthy divorcee who drags her daughter from one high-end store to another in an endless quest to fill an emotional void with material goods. The daughter Edie grudgingly goes along inwardly cursing her mother and acting out, but remaining impassive or numb on the outside. Her most cherished memory is when her parents were together and threw a party where she felt “Surely this was happiness, surely this was the happiest moment of her childhood – though she couldn't know it, then, and indeed its glory lay in not needing to 'know' it, or to know anything.” She found the greatest pleasure in life was in the shared and loving company of her family which has now been replaced by empty consumerism. Her mother's outward appearance is described in grotesque detail and as being thinly veiled beneath expensive clothes and make up – reflecting the ugliness of her attitude towards life. It leads the daughter to commit an act of small rebellion to expose and shame her. 'Alliances of Youth' presents a trio of the women who were most intimately acquainted with a young man who has died. They gather for a funeral and their feelings of possession over the departed man are played out with all the dramatic tension of a staged play. Jealousy and resentment divide the women – none of whom really knew or understood the man because of the secrets he maintained.

The characters in some of the stories avoid dealing with their own shortcomings and feelings of being unfulfilled by channeling their energy into specific people. In “The Boarder” a married Catholic woman meets a young professor who she impulsively invites to become a boarder in her home. She sees him as a companion and friend, but as time goes on the professor becomes more elusive and mysterious. Her husband tries to hold her back from becoming too intimate with the professor and allow him his privacy. But when a violent altercation takes place and an unsettling truth about him is revealed about him the processor suddenly disappears from her life leaving her bereft. The incident causes her to meditate on her own solitude and distance from people. In “Wildfires” a young man comes to visit with his brother and sister in law before starting college. The brother Gerald is haunted by his time in Vietnam and unable to begin his life fully. His wife Janet hasn't been able to find fulfillment either as she has unrealized artistic ambitions. Johnson has an extraordinary way of imbedding Janet's inexpressible emotions in her physicality several times throughout the story – specifically through her hands. “At her sides lay her white hands, unclenched and still.” The good-intentioned aunt of the story ‘Schadenfreude’ invites her niece to live with her after the niece’s husband is imprisoned. Inevitably her help is more about claiming possession of the niece rather than really assisting her to achieve true independence.

Women find themselves in desperate circumstances in some of the stories as they try to figure out what should come next in their lives. Melancholy hangs heavily over three people in the story ‘A Dry Season.’ A woman named Nora avoids planning her next move after the death of her husband while on an extended stay with her friend Eleanor and her husband Neil. It’s a hot August at the couple’s lake house and while the three spend their time pleasantly together none of them are content with their lives. The effect of their unvoiced yearnings and restrained sorrow is subtly devastating. In the high drama story ‘The Metamorphosis’ a famed singer named Lacey performs for the crowd, but experiences a panicked moment of existential crisis when she thinks she sees in the crowd the leering smile of a man. Her artifice crumbles and her true self is revealed. This provokes lots of interesting questions about what someone’s essential being is and whether a person is able to interact with others without having some sort of front. “They love only the mask of her but that is all right – she is a symbol, an ideal, a star. She knows they too are wearing masks and she has often thought, up here, working her heart out, how necessary are these brash outlandish masks, how indispensible to protect the secret, feeling self.” All people create a public persona to engage socially, but it’s something which this story proposes is necessary in order to guard against the hurt of being fully revealed. In the story 'Hemingway's Cats' the central female character feels like an island, locked inside her own head and mentally removed at the safe distance from the reality around her. The wavering uncertainty of her answer to questions: “Yes. I mean, no” perfectly encapsulating her remove from the present and the pain of being drawn ever back to the past. 'Evening at Home' is a subtly troubling story of a recently married couple who plays host to the wife's parents for the night. Both the chirpy talkative mother and serious silent father are portrayed in such fine detail they feel entirely realistic as if they’ve been plucked out of someone’s living room. Their daughter's sense of being caged speaks of silent pain which cannot be uttered or expressed.

There is a section of this book which includes stories that form a conceptually cohesive group from Johnson's book of short stories “Last Encounter with the Enemy.” They all portray scenes from the lives of different female authors including Flannery O’Connor, Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, Emily Dickinson and Willa Cather. Each story records an encounter between (a fictionalized version of ) the author himself and the writer portrayed using a series of reality-bending techniques. In most cases an acute awkwardness results from the meeting between Johnson and the literary idol each of whom is often unaware of the way time and the establishment have canonized them. In 'First Surmise' questions put to Emily Dickinson are received with horrified wonder until “Silence enwrapped our carriage like invisible gauze.” There is a disconnect between the author and the aura surrounding their work which leaves the intruder frequently baffled by the actual personality he encounters. There is a tragic sense of the writers feeling misunderstood in some of the stories like ‘To the Madhouse’ where Woolf works to revise her little-read novel “The Years.” The narrative voices of the stories reflect each writer’s personality so what really shines through is the distinct sensibility of each author that’s portrayed. This is a brilliant concept drawing on Johnson’s skill as a biographer and each of these stories are a dynamic tribute to the authors they portray, a serious commentary on their writing and a tremendously fun venture playing with the elasticity of narrative form.

The collection also includes some previously unpublished stories which take great narrative risks to produce startling and memorable results. The story 'Shameless' is a powerful account of a woman's desire for a man, her calculated tactics to capture his affection and the way she eventually loses out to many other women. Her intense passion is dammed behind a calm demeanor and her pride doesn't allow her to ask for what she really wants. What's unspoken between her and her lover is the reason why they can't really be together as a couple. Their pleasantries with each other are more dramatic than if they were to have a violent screaming break up. 'Who, What, When, Where' is perhaps the most technically daring story in the book where the account of a rape and murder are filtered through a detached journalistic perspective. Rather than mimic the structure of a news story, the details are chillingly relayed with a fatigued sense that this crime was inevitable. The deliberately anonymous character of the female victim perversely shows a skewed sense of impulsive tenderness which wouldn't be felt with a more detailed description. All emotion is held behind this diligent attempt to reconstruct details of the crime in a way that makes it more sharply felt and horrifying.

Johnson proves with this collection what a powerfully gifted storyteller he is. Many of the characters portrayed in these stories expand voluminously so that they feel fully three-dimensional. Their histories that include heart-break, loss and yearnings can be felt in the actions and choices they make in their own particular stories. It's the short story writer's best trick to make you feel like you've lived a long time with his characters even though you are only acquainted with them for several pages. "Women I've Known" is such a rewarding read it's well worth taking your time with each story to savor it's unique and thought-provoking riches.

The Thing About December by Donal Ryan

Some books grab you with a voice so strong and distinct you can’t help listening. The narrator in “The Thing About December” follows a young man named Johnsey in a rural Irish town over the course of a year. He lives under the shadow of men whom he considers to be great and feels himself to be a total loser. He’s often steeped in fantasies where he becomes a hero – often with semi-clad women clamouring after him, but in reality his actions are awkward and nervous leading him to be bullied and ignored and misunderstood. Amidst the calamitous year that’s covered he becomes caught in the middle of a hyped-up property boom that causes attention to cluster around him with everyone seeking their own slice of the pie. Johnsey also makes a couple of close friends in the two brilliantly realized characters “Mumbly Dave” and the nurse with the “beautiful voice” Siobhan. However, most of the time Johnsey spends his time (as he puts it) “sitting on his hole” while a maelstrom of dramatic events take place around him.

There are several things which cause Johnsey’s story to come so alive. Most obviously, the Irish vernacular of both the narrator and dialogue of the characters makes them powerfully realistic. Often these idiosyncratic descriptions come with more heavily-laden meanings. Seemingly offhand comments become wise and sombre observations about human nature and the insignificance of individual lives in the grand scheme of things. Johnsey’s stance as a solitary quiet figure brings forth a lot of sharp observations about the difference between the internal and external world. “A man is only safe inside in himself. There’s nothing people won’t do or say when they think right is on their side. Who decides what’s right?” Remaining closed to the outside world he's able to maintain his own sense of integrity (no matter how self-deprecating) and understanding of what is right. He realizes that people are driven by their own self belief which will often clash with his own understanding of the world.

Johnsey tries to remain on his own. However, he knows that being caught in his own thoughts can have a deteriorating effect on the mind: “Too much thinking could balls you up rightly. Your mind could start acting like a video player, showing you your own thickness.” He desperately wants to engage in some social interaction but it’s a tremendous struggle. There's a heartbreaking recollection from his teenage years when he attempts to go to a local dance which ends disastrously. The result is an understanding that “For a man to be lonely, Johnsey knew, he did not need to be alone.” Sometimes the company of others can only make you understand how different and excluded you are and so increase your sense of isolation even more.

Crossing the boundary between inertia and action is near impossible for Johnsey, but doing so is the only way of achieving real self-knowledge. “Sometimes you didn’t know how you would feel about doing a thing until you went and did it. And then it’s too late; you can never undo it.” There can be both positive and negative consequences of breaking through your own hesitancy and taking action. On the rare occasions he does so he discovers how tricky it is dealing with people in reality rather than inside his head. “People are better inside in your head. When you’re longing for them, they’re perfect.” His interactions reveal both his own inadequacy and the shortcomings of those around him. However, as the progress of time shows it’s impossible for him to remain an island. His personal space is invaded and he must learn how to react and engage.

Amongst other things, this is a book about mourning. Not only does Johnsey lose people who are important to him, but he loses his idealized versions of the world. He discovers that “sadness plus sadness equals more sadness.” No revelations about life or special faith in humanity rise out of the ashes of what is lost. It’s a cold hard fact. For some time he lives off from the kindness shown to him after experiencing tremendous loss. But he learns that “Sympathy doesn’t last forever. Like a pebble thrown in a river, it’s a splash and a ripple and gone.” He must accept his loss and move on with his life.

Since this novel is plotted out over the course of a year and follows each month it is moreover about time. Not only does it record the events which happen in Johnsey's life each month, but the way his mind loops back to thoughts of his parents and the deep loss he feels for time lost. In a sense he wants things to remain constant and unchanging so he recalls what traditionally happens on the farm each month. But nothing remains the same: “that’s the way time is – it’s not a constant either.” Dramatic events can cause life to speed up at a pace he finds hard to keep up with. As the world progresses and changes around him so must he. For someone so inhibited this is painfully difficult for Johnsey to accept.